Pig, Out: Abattoir closed again as Hong Kong culls 4,100 more pigs over swine fever

Pig trotters hang from hooks as a butcher prepares pork meat at a market in Hong Kong in May. Photo via AFP.
Pig trotters hang from hooks as a butcher prepares pork meat at a market in Hong Kong in May. Photo via AFP.

Hong Kong’s pork traders have shot down a suggestion from health officials to clear the city’s government slaughterhouse once a day for disinfection as authorities yet again culled thousands of pigs at the facility after a case of African swine fever was detected there on Friday.

According to RTHK, some 4,100 pigs were culled on Sunday after the disease was detected in an animal at Hong Kong’s Sheung Shui slaughterhouse close to the border with China, the second such case in the city in a month amid a widespread outbreak of the virus on the mainland.

The animal came from a farm in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, and importation from mainland China has been suspended until further notification, Sophia Chan, Secretary of the city’s Food and Health Department said Friday night.

The government-run slaughterhouse in Sheung Shui will be closed for cleansing and disinfection, she added.

Last month around 6,000 pigs were culled after the virus was detected in a pig imported from a farm in the same province. Supply from across the border was temporarily suspended for a week during the disinfection of slaughterhouse.

Secretary Chan said that officials had floated to pig traders the idea of emptying the facility once a day for cleaning to prevent further outbreaks.

However, Kwan Kwok-wah, from the Fresh Meat Alliance, said that some traders import pigs in large numbers, and should be able to choose the day they’re slaughtered, though he did say he would urge other traders to have their pigs slaughtered within 36 hours of arriving at the abattoir.

He also maintained that traders still hadn’t been compensated for the last cull.

Chan said that shortening the time pigs spend in the slaughterhouse was “very important point given that there is an incubation period” for the virus, and added that other safeguards had been stepped up.

Pork is a staple of Chinese cuisine, with space-starved Hong Kong importing the majority of what it consumes from the mainland.

Demand for pig products is such that the last cull virtually emptied shelves and forced some vendors to diversify to keep their doors open — including one who took to selling discount panties and bras instead of pork.

The virus is not dangerous to humans but is fatal to pigs and wild boar.



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